An Activist Who Believed In Inclusion, And Adventure

Marie Marsh Calvin, 89, a social worker and an activist through her church… (Courtesy of Linda Calvin…)

June 22, 2014|By ANNE M. HAMILTON, Special to The Courant, The Hartford Courant

Marie Marsh Calvin lived on a farm in a tiny town in upstate New York, but grew up with a vision of a world that was diverse, international and welcoming. A social worker by training, she embraced social change and its effects — people with AIDS, gays, lesbians, people of other faiths and countries.

She was ready for adventure and fun, and never reluctant to try something that challenged society's ideas about who older women can be.

Marie Calvin, 89, died May 28th of complications from heart surgery. She lived in South Glastonbury.

On the Valois, N.Y., farm of her parents, Arthur and Emma Marsh, she worked outside in the vineyards and orchards, and when she set out to pick more cherries in a day than one of the harvesters, she succeeded. the family lived near Seneca Lake, and she loved fishing, but she never learned to swim.

Marie grew up in an atmosphere of acceptance. Her father had once employed a black farmhand and ignored warnings about the potential dangers to his two daughters. When a Girl Scout troop wouldn't accept a black girl, her mother started a new, more inclusive group.

No one expected or encouraged her to go to college, but she attended Elmira College and then enrolled in the Smith College's School of Social Work.

While she was working at an internship in Chicago, she met Robert Calvin, a young engineering student on a fellowship, and they married in 1954. While living in Chicago, she worked at Travelers Aid, which helped protect stranded travelers, and also at a social service agency until Robert was recruited for a job with United Aircraft Corp. They moved to Connecticut in 1959.

Marie Calvin worked for many years as a therapist with Child and Family Services (now called The Village for Families and Children) in its Manchester office.

Over the years, many of Calvin's activities reflected her interest in inclusiveness. For years, she hosted inner city children at her house for the summer. A young black man from Mississippi came and spent a year with the family. She became involved with a federal program through the Agency for International Development that emphasized people-to-people democracy, and began a friendship with a Colombian family, the Abdalas, that lasted for years, and resulted in several exchanges, with the Calvin children visiting Colombia and vice-versa.

Her daughter Linda Calvin Kern, now a Spanish teacher in Raleigh, N.C., attributes her career to her early exposure to the Abdala family and her visits with them.

Thanksgiving usually included several people from other countries. "We had a big vision of the world as youths," Kern said. "She loved people and was committed to people."

When her daughter Kate came out as gay, Calvin was at first worried about the prejudice that gays and lesbians faces in the 1980s. There were few anti-discrimination laws to protect gays in the workplace, and it would be many years before gay marriage became a possibility. AIDS had emerged as a mysterious and deadly disease and being gay was being like having a target on one's back.

"It was a very difficult time," Kern said. Her mother "cried a lot, but she made a decision: 'What does Kate need to support her?"

From then on, Marie Calvin's support was strong and sustaining. The family was the subject of an article in The Courant by Susan Campbell that dealt with its acceptance of Kate's sexuality.

At the Congregational Church in South Glastonbury, where she was a member, Calvin proposed that the church adopt the position of being open and affirming — meaning it would welcome homosexuals. She believed there would be little opposition, but she had miscalculated. Richard Allen had just become the minister at the church, and even he had some concerns about adopting this stance.

"I was a new pastor and didn't want to be rocking the boat, and Marie Calvin was rocking the boat," Allen recalled. "She pushed me to look deeply into my own prejudices and name them, and do something about them. I knew she was speaking up for justice, and when I recognized that, I became her partner."

The church undertook a study period that lasted two years. Gays and lesbians told the congregation about the prejudice and discrimination they faced. Little by little, attitudes softened.

"We've kept on working on the transformation of the heart," Allen said.

By the time church members voted on the issue, two families had left, but many more gay and lesbian people had joined.

"Marie was not only the initiator, but she sustained the energy with her passion, not only for gay people, but for people struggling with their homophobia," Allen said.

The Calvins became active in PFLAG, , an organization that provides support and advocacy for families and friends of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, and they served as co-presidents in the early '90s.